I can quite clearly say that it’s not for me to answer trans-gender questions...I can tell you what it’s like to be the sister of a trans-gendered person.
Upstage - Theatre on Radio (CKUT, Montreal) host Eric Sukhu spoke with Playwright/Performer Johanna Nutter about My Pregnant Brother presented as part of SummerWorks. [This article first appeared at The Charlebois Post - Montreal]
UPSTAGE: There’s likely many people who haven’t seen it yet. Tell us about it.
NUTTER: It played in English at Centaur, and at La Licorne in French. Often I had to explain to people - I know it sounds like a stand up show but it’s not. Now I have to do the opposite because it [was] in the Just For Laughs Festival and Zoofest.
My Pregnant Brother might sound like a Howie Mandel routine. But it’s not. It’s a true story about me and my family. My brother is trans-gendered. He used to be my sister. In 2006 he stopped taking his hormone injections and during that time he got pregnant. He decided to keep the baby and was hoping that I would join him and the three of us would become a family together.
UPSTAGE: I’ve seen it three times; one of the most heartwarming stories ever. How do you feel about it still going on?
NUTTER: It’s really nice to do something that has such an emotional impact on people. I see it opening them up. I can’t imagine that being daunting in any way. I feel like I have something to offer and am glad that people are giving me so many platforms to tell my story.
UPSTAGE: How did being part of Zoofest come about?
NUTTER: A bunch of people who work for Just For Laughs came to see my final show of the French version at La Licorne. Every audience is different. Sometimes a certain number of audience members can have a profound effect on the whole audience. Because there were so many Just For Laughs people in the audience, the show that night got funnier by the minute. Afterwards, they invited me to be part of the Festival. I’ve been very lucky that way. I'm just starting now to get a handle on what it means to produce and market yourself. Hopefully I’m learning because I can’t rely on people calling up and inviting me. Seems like every time I do it, a new invitation comes out of it.
I wanted it to be the lean mean fighting machine it was when it started.
UPSTAGE: How has it changed or grown since the first Fringe presentation in 2009?
NUTTER: It did change for a while because I thought this just can’t be good enough. So I made it 20 minutes longer. Slowly but surely after we took it to Ottawa and Vancouver, director Jeremy Taylor convinced me to whittle it down to what it had been. So now it’s pretty much the same play it was. I wanted it to be the lean mean fighting machine it was when it started.
UPSTAGE: What kinds of changes did Jeremy suggest?
NUTTER: Because there was an urgency in the original telling, as I did it more and more often, I started to lose the fear and get a little too comfortable; believing my own hype.
UPSTAGE: I know the play is about more than trans-gendered issues but how did you feel about bringing this subject to an audience.
NUTTER: In the beginning, I felt I had to answer questions about trans-gender with some kind of a legitimate answer. But now I’m more comfortable in what my purpose is and what my point is. I can quite clearly say that it’s not for me to answer trans-gender questions. I can tell you what it’s like to be the sister of a trans-gendered person. And I will leave it up to my brother James Diamond who is a fantastic artist in his own right and an incredible filmmaker. There was recently a retrospective of his work at the Rhubarb Festival in Toronto where they showed his first film, The Man From Venus.
UPSTAGE: What was the reaction from the trans-gender community?
NUTTER: No negative reactions but most of the comments have been similar. Trans-gendered people want to bring members of their family to see it because they feel I do a good job of bridging the gap between non-understanding and being trans-gendered.
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